One more good day
by AleTheHOUSEwife
Summary: COMPLETE! Post s.8 -Cuddy reaches the door handle and turns it so that it unlocks from the inside. When she looks up from it to see who is outside, her heart skips a beat, and something very quick and very scary happens to her knees. She needs to lean against the doorframe with her right hand, incapable of processing the sight of her unexpected guest.
1. Chapter 1

**One more good day**

**- Variations on Everybody Dies -**

**Part 1**

"_Stop all the clocks." W.H. Auden_

–

It is a cloudy, dry morning. Pale as well, and blindingly so. Doctor Lisa Cuddy turns her eyes from the slice of light hurting her abrupt awakening. She brings a hand to her forehead, looking around to find herself and her world, her new world, in that room with pearl gray walls and flowered drapes, where she has been spending every night of her life for two years now. It's all there. Her white coat hanging from the back of a wooden chair, her briefcase half-open, some unfinished paperwork showing from inside. Cuddy turns aside to find her cellphone and a book sitting quietly on the nightstand, and there's some kind of cozy, comforting smell lingering in the room from days and days of perfume being sprayed on her clothes. It just won't go away, will it? It's like the other house, where she could walk blindfolded and recognize the rooms just by their smell.

The other house. Memories rush back to her head.

Cuddy sits up, realizing why she's awake at least half an hour before her alarm clock going off. The door bell just rang. Slightly confused and still sleepy, she grabs a quilt and wraps herself up in it, reluctant to stand up as this summer of 2012 is to begin.

The bell rings again. Cuddy is almost there, she frowns a bit: whoever it is that is showing up at this merciless, ungodly hour must have really important reasons not to end up hearing her opinion on scaring people awake on a Tuesday morning.

Another ring. Cuddy reaches the door handle and turns it so that it unlocks from the inside. When she looks up from it to see who is outside, her heart skips a beat, and something very quick and very scary happens to her knees. She needs to lean against the doorframe with her right hand, incapable of processing the sight of her unexpected guest.

He, on the other hand, looks very worn out. His formal suit is wrinkled, the neck of his white shirt is unbuttoned and the tie is loose. In his face, something betrays the lack of sleep, and his slightly sunken cheekbones reveal some sort of illness which is struggling to come out from the hide. But what scares Cuddy the most are his eyes, once full of warmth and now hollow as the stare he's piercing her with. She hasn't seen him for two years. They made the decision together, so she would be able to leave her previous life behind. It has been a very painful resolution and an incredibly hard endeavor, but they have both managed to live with the absence of each other's company and affection. Cuddy swallows, but the gesture doesn't provide any sort of relief to her dry mouth.

Wilson, on the other hand, has never looked so cold and detached to her. When he speaks, he does it in a low, unemotional pitch that alone could freeze anybody's heart.

"House is dead."

–

**24 hours earlier**

House has just decided that tonight he will be a no-show. It's not like a healthy, pricy hooker fest won't do any good to his mood, but that is not what he's looking for. It's not even like he knows what he's looking for, but he has a feeling that paid sex is not what he needs. Even his usual Chinese take-away is duller tonight. The white paper box lies untouched on the coffee table, and the TV is silent. All is silent, and all is flat and so meaningless. There is nothing worthwhile because in the end everyone is just waiting to die and that will be it, forever and ever. Why bother. Why fight. Fight for what, then? Wilson gave up. Wilson is dying and without him it is all a sham. Without him, he will just need to function: do his bills, stay out of trouble, go to work, go to sleep. Year after year until it will all be over, mercifully and forever. He will have to stay alive because it will be his responsibility, but that doesn't mean he will do it with any joy or for any meaning whatsoever. He will just breathe until he will be done breathing due to some higher circumstances forcing his body to quit.

That is it. Starting tonight, Gregory House turns into a machine. No more suffering. No more risking his soul for people who will either leave him out of disappointment or out of cancer. Tomorrow, he will go to prison to finish serving his sentence, as it should have been the first time, without Foreman working that stupid deal to have him back to the appearance of getting his life back. It should have been the other way: Wilson and him being over, Cuddy and him being over, the world and him being over. Once out of jail, he would have gone far from there, far from everything familiar, far from any feelings or bonds. He and his brain, together forever, maybe unraveling some other mystery: science is full of them. But no, it had to go differently. He had to fall again for the temptations of human society: friendship, forgiveness, a job that made him happy. Happy, what a stupid concept. Losers believe they're happy. Losers like him.

Now it's done. There's not even a point in living for the mystery. Because that is just not enough. Not anymore, since there are gaps in-between mysteries, and those gaps were filled by something House won't have anymore. What really makes him happy is more complicated than "solving mysteries": it's "solving mysteries and loving a very selected number of human beings who are probably not even aware of how much he cares for them". And on top of that very selected number of people, there is one who is going to die. And there is nothing anyone can do to avoid that. There is no medicine, there is no epiphany, there is no miracle - of all things yes, House even considered a miracle - that is going to keep his best friend from being dead in five or six months.

And with him dead, there is no love, no light to keep him connected. Everything is just collapsing on him like that building where he had to cut a girl's leg and it just wasn't enough. It never is. No matter how hard he fights against chance, chance always wins: then like now. And the worst of it is that this time he has even helped the collapse. He moved a brick and it all went down more quickly than it should have. He was about to deal with losing Wilson, when something he had done when he wasn't going to deal with it just backfired in his face. All of this is happening now because he cared too much. He is going to jail because he has done a stupid, stupid thing in a moment of pain, as he always does. It is his whole life always coming down to that: driving cars into buildings, provoking ceilings to cave in, things like these.

House knows it's only his fault: no matter how he tries to mitigate his acts, no pain should have gotten him to that point. Not the other time, not now. He feels the guilt and the shame of being out of control, and this has to stop. This is why he is going to reach oblivion, to embrace his new way of life. His new way of death. He will just have a crazy night with his heroin addicted patient, and he will go to jail the morning after, happy and high. High. _Numbed_...

But just before he's about to stand up and grab the keys of his bike, he realizes there is a call he needs to make. One call. Of all the people he called today, his psychiatrist was as always vague and unsatisfying like the faith healer he accuses him to be; and Wilson didn't pick up god knows why. So there's just one remaining person to call, and this is not something House is doing for himself. He needs to tell her because he won't be there and she will. Because he will be needed but won't be able to do anything about it, not anymore. She, on the other hand, could be there, to at least average the need for love and contact. House needs to tell Cuddy that Wilson is dying and that he is not going to be there for that, due to what is none of her business. He picks up the phone, but then he realizes he cannot make it through the dialing of the number and the wait for her to pick up: at the second ring, he slams the receiver down to the floor in a stream of rage and shame and walks out, not even caring to close the door behind him.

–

**Cuddy's house**

Cuddy's jaw drops. She gets dizzy, leans against the door frame with her whole body tilted aside. Wilson waits for her to recover, but all she can do is stare at him, frozen motionless. They stand there for a minute, then she shakes her head.

"No." She whispers through her dried lips.

Wilson doesn't know what to do. He doesn't know what to think. His famous nerve is gone, and thank god he is not working anymore, because he wouldn't be the doctor everybody knew, the one who always has the right words and gestures. He is now awkward and clumsy as everybody else in these situations, and above all he doesn't know how to deal with himself before dealing with anybody else. But he needed to come here and tell Cuddy, he couldn't have anybody else do it and now it's not like he's regretting it, but he is certainly feeling bad from being the bearer of such news. He is feeling bad for her receiving them. He is feeling bad for her having to deal with a future where House is dead and the two of them won't have their closure. Wilson, in his naiveness, has always thought that sooner or later something would bring Cuddy and House together again. But this was unexpected and now it's done: House killed himself and Cuddy needs to know. Wilson feels sad for the two of them and this may be a sign that his old self is somehow resurfacing. Feelings start to boil up his chest again, and his stare gets warmer. He has been missing Cuddy, and until House was there he could deal with it, they could deal with it together. Now that he is gone, though, Wilson rzes that Cuddy's proximity is making him whole again, in all the pain that this brings: her presence and company are fixing the holes in his soul. He can finally suffer, he can cry for the friend he's just lost, for the absurdity of having to die after him when all he could imagine was dying with him at his side. Everything is coming back to him now, almost twelve hours after that last broken glance he flashed at House right before the ceiling collapsed on him. Of all things, James Wilson can't bear not to feel. And the feelings are coming back. A lone tear rolls down his cheek.

"He's gone. I'm so sorry." He declares. This said, his lips tighten in an effort to restrain the rest of his tears, eager to come now that they have been allowed to flow.

Cuddy doesn't know what to do or say. She feels completely numbed. Clumsily, she invites Wilson in and they go to the living room.

"Rachel's asleep." She whispers, gently closing the door that leads from the living room to the corridor where the little girl's room is. Turning back, Cuddy is stricken by the sight of a deadly pale, thinner Wilson with a stubble and deep, dark circles sinking his eyes into the eye sockets. Her doctor instincts tell her something that she doesn't want to know.

"Are you okay?" She stammers, approaching him. She brings a hand to his forehead.

"Sit down." She orders.

"Look, there is something I need to tell you..." Wilson tries to reply.

"I said sit down." Cuddy's words are not meant as an invitation. She unwinds her quilt and gets chilly while adjusting it around Wilson's shoulders.

"You must have spiked a fever during the night." She gets a thermometer from the bathroom cabinet and keeps talking from there. "Did you drive here alone?"

Wilson sits silent. There are things she doesn't know, and there are things she needs to know. He has no idea where to begin with.

"Wilson." Cuddy walks into the living room, sits down beside him and sticks the thermometer into his ear. "Wilson." She repeats, in a lower tone.

He turns to her. She checks the thermometer.

"You're feverish. Couldn't you call me instead of coming?"

"I needed to come."

"You drove all night, you're clearly in shock and..."

_...and House is dead._

She quits talking. The news eventually hit her back. Her eyes get misty for a second, but she seems to recollect herself soon enough to resist the deepest impulses her body is sending. She looks like she's holding up, but she's not the same as before: something has changed. She takes a deep breath.

"What happened."

Wilson dries the corner of his eye with a thumb.

"It's a long story."

Cuddy covers her mouth with the palm of her hand. She is lost for words. House killed himself, Wilson is dying, everything has gone wrong. It seems like there will be no more good days, and all is just coming so hard to believe. She needs to process, but having her dying friend in front of her, feverish and shivering, his voice almost gone from all the difficult talking, all this doesn't allow her to release her feelings. She needs to protect Wilson before anything else. She needs to keep him safe and tell him she will be there for him.

Cuddy reaches out to Wilson, touching his wet cheek. He flashes her a broken glance.

"Come here," She whispers.

His breath trembles as she wraps her arms around him, keeping him close so he feels less lost, less hopeless. While he cannot see her, she closes her eyes for a second and sets her tears free.

**Two days later**

House stands outside the funeral home. He can see them all seated, waiting for it to begin. There are sporadic tears: the vast majority of that small group of people sits quiet, they seem to not even blink. Everybody looks like they are still waiting for him to show up, announce it is all a joke; at the same time, though, they also look like they knew from the beginning this is how it was all going to end. In suicide. A very scenic one, in the best House tradition. Still.

House does not feel sorry. This is needed. It is an endeavor serving a higher purpose, in the best interest of the most important person. He knows they would understand. He knows they will carry on. He took care of leaving them all some sort of legacy, even though he might have done it in a controversial way: he cares about each one of them and he knows they cared about him and what he was trying to teach them, without teaching them. He loves them. Standing there, House realizes how narcissistic it might look that he is standing there, watching his own funeral. But he's not here to watch: holding his cellphone, he is here waiting for the right moment to hit "send" and text Wilson. To do that, he needs to keep an eye on the whole thing: and watching brings him feelings and thoughts that are -yes- narcissistic. In a good way, though. Not everybody is so lucky to sit at their own funeral, and even if more people were, not many would see that much love.

Because now House has to face it: he is right that when one dies everybody loves them. But now he can tell the difference between one who is loved because he's dead or dying and one who was loved before as he is after. Take Wilson. Everybody keeps stopping by to pat his shoulder before walking to their seats. He briefly glances up at everybody and gives them a sad smile. Wilson has always been loved. He will be loved forever by those who love him now. And House can't avoid reflecting that on himself. Everybody looks like they really, really cared about him. All of them. And the surprising thing is that he apparently killed himself, which is not something generally leading to an increase in love. Instead, all the people here are emanating affection and sincerity in all they are saying about him. House _was_ loved. This brings something unexpected: he feels less alone. Which is crazy, since he just cut himself off from the lives of everyone he knows: but knowing there are people out there whose feelings toward him are honest and good, even though he cannot benefit directly from it... well, this does good to House's soul. He feels like Stacy was right: there are people out there who can love him. And this feels peaceful and makes everything kind of right.

House doesn't miss people. He will miss Wilson when he goes, but he knows he is about to build up that departure as the most unforgettable of both their lives. Wilson will die, and that is breaking House's heart. But it's not about his own heart now: it's about Wilson's. And now that he has a plan that is finally working, House is sure Wilson won't regret going through the last four days to live the next five months as House has planned them to be lived.

House flashes another glance inside. It's almost time. When he turns to his phone again, though, he catches something with the corner of his eye. Leaning against the wall, he takes a breath. That sight he just caught made his head dizzy.

**One hour later**

The room is empty, silent, as everybody just went home. They left him there to go back to their lives, the lives which carry on uninterrupted. Cuddy takes a step inside, and then another one. She finds herself walking down the narrow space between the two blocks of seats in all solemnity. She's not going to lose her nerve now. "Too easy," she thinks, "now that I'm alone..."

She stops halfway.

"No one can judge what House did."

Cuddy knows she's right. House's life and death can't be measured with human standards. It is the pivot of humanity to live and to die, it is what _being_ is all about. But House did not live like any other man and he certainly did not die that way. Though, Cuddy hates House for dying and she judges him, she does indeed.

She is mad and out of her senses, she feels like she could set that place to fire like House did with that warehouse, and leave it to crumble down in ashes. How he dared betraying his self-proclaimed human responsibility is a mystery to her. Was he really that cowardly? Couldn't he at least live to prove himself right, that we are responsible for surviving? Wasn't he narcissistic enough for that? She did not really think anything could bring him to that point. And the hatred she is feeling is what kept her from walking in when everybody was there. She knows she owes an explanation to Wilson and she will give it to him. But for now it's just about letting her rage flow freely. Because, deep inside, Cuddy still loves House. After all he did to her, she still feels like she was the one abandoning him, leaving him to the destiny he faced thirty-six hours earlier: she's led him to that warehouse. Cuddy also knows how unfair this is to her. No one's suicide can be traced back to each person who didn't treat the deceased right. Still, there's a load of responsibility coming from loving House, and Cuddy has always taken that responsibility fully. As Wilson does. The thing with loving House is that the man is extreme and demands for extreme feelings: either you accept that or you are going to end up being hurt. Like she was hurt when she decided to drop that load from her own shoulders. She was too much into it to be able to go freely and easily. And House did not help with that: he loved her and he did what his warped world view suggested him to do to get back at her for quitting on him. End of story.

Cuddy loves House and House killed himself and she never got to say fuck you for ruining my life and maybe kiss him one last time, and it's all a mess and now Cuddy hates him and loves him at the same goddamn time, and his ashes sit before her helpless eyes, surrounded by white flowers, and all she wants to do is scream.

So she does.

And her voice resounds across the empty room, broken; it hits the walls and bounces back to her.


	2. Chapter 2

Part 2

"No, little darlin', don't shed no tear." B. Marley

–––

House will always be dead to Cuddy. She will never know the truth because he is the master of puppets and gets to decide who knows and who doesn't. And no one has to know because that is the deal with change: dying changes everything. Almost dying changes nothing. And well, if he thinks about it, House realizes he almost died, so he finds himself in that predicament where nothing really changes. But to everybody else, House is dead for real, and this cannot help but make him feel different.

House died in that explosion. His body came out from the back entrance, but his wounds and his grudges, his mistakes, his shame and guilt... the worst of him burned with the warehouse. The good things he did made it to the exit, and from there to the funeral home, where he could overhear everybody speak of him like a decent, exceptional person who made a change in their lives.

House hasn't changed that much while contemplating hell and heaven in that burning building, but the strive is what is changing his ways now. He got out. He resurfaced. He risked his life multiple times, but this is the first time he feels like the days following his leg incident: he feels like a breakthrough is happening. Only now it's more empowering: first of all, because he has nothing to lose this time. All the other reasons are there to be revealed, and he will think about them as soon as he has time. Or maybe not. Who cares, in the end. House survived because he was lucky not to be standing three feet closer to the front door when the burning ceiling crumbled all the way down on him. He was about to come out to the world and needed a way to save the day for himself, and for Wilson above all. And the world helped him implement his strategy. That was it. He feels stupid and lousy when his thoughts go back to the image of him lying on the floor of that warehouse, determined to let himself die in there. He doesn't even know what he is going to do with his life, and the most _liberating_ feeling ever is that he doesn't even care.

He will think of that after Wilson. Wilson is the priority and Wilson is the one who has to be protected and taken care of, the one for whom plans need to be made, and the ultimate reason why House is here now, in his helmet and leather jacket, waiting to embark in their last road trip.  
Just before that, though, House asks his friend to take a detour. Wilson instantly understands.

"Are you sure?" He asks.

"I'm sure she's feeling like crap at the moment. We need to make her feel worse."

"You still love her."

House does not reply. He never stopped loving her.

"Of course not." Wilson shakes his head, a smirk lighting up his face. House treasures those now rare moments when his friend seems healthy and without a care in the world. His answers are now all planned to provoke that reaction.

"Yeah."

"So you love her."

House gets serious now.

"I called her the other day. Before, you know..." House gestures with his hand, mimicking the act of slitting his own throat.

Wilson raises his brow.

"You... called _her_. You could have gone to jail only for that call, you know. No need to waste hospital appliances and get Park a booboo."

"I stole the number from Foreman's office, well after that _other_ incident with the MRI."

"I wasn't going to ask. What did she say."

"Nothing. I lost my nerve too. See? We're even, Cuddy and I. I didn't ask her for advice on killing myself and she didn't come to my funeral. She needs to know that."

Wilson laughs.

"So what are you gonna do."

"I don't know. Yet. It's a four hour detour, Wilson. Don't you think I'll have come up with something by then?"

"You see, House..." Wilson points his finger at him, the corners of his lips turning upwards. "You _are_ a good man. Deep down. Deep, _deep_ down. You want to let her know you two are all right."

"You said I was an ass, now you say I'm decent. I'm confused." House shrugs. "And this trip is about you, so just shut up, Wilson. It's gonna be five months of this, you will get sick of it soon if you don't stop."

"See? I enable you. I turn you upside down and you play the game. You ask me to stop and I won't." Wilson smiles. "We're gonna be fine."

House zips up his jacket. "We're always fine."

–

**The day after**

Cuddy wakes up early. She instinctively reaches out to her phone to call Wilson, see how he is; but she recalls their last conversation and her hand drops motionless onto the nightstand. Wilson said something about needing some time on his own, and that he would get back to her. She closes her eyes again for a moment, and suddenly she's piercing the ceiling with her stare.

Cuddy knows. She didn't know yesterday, but she knows now. Well, she has a feeling, at least. The feeling something extraordinary might have happened and everyone was meant to _not_ notice it.

She hears the pouring rain hitting the roof, and there's a smell of freshly washed grass coming in from the slightly open window. She sits up.

The porch is safe. No rain there. You could sit down on the rocking chair and just watch it all happen, the wet road shining, the soaked trees... This morning, though, Cuddy is not here for the sight. She had a dream last night: House was still alive. She didn't see him in her dream. She just felt it. Inside. She was about to walk in to House's funeral like she had tried to do the day before. But this time, when she walked into the empty room, his ashes were gone. Cuddy recalls turning around, calling Wilson's name. She also recalls the silence surrounding her, her heart pounding heavily, the noise of blood rushing to her head... and then the whooshing noise of a motorcycle in the distance. That moment, she knew House was alive and her dream drifted away into the dark and the peacefulness of real sleep. It was just a dream, but it kept her going all night, just cherishing that incredible feeling of utter and complete relief, as if nothing could ever be wrong again.

And now, Cuddy knows. A hunch coming from that weird dream brought her to the porch this morning. Now it's the epiphany: a once familiar red thong is hanging from the door handle and after all it seems like things are going to be all right.

–

House pulls over beside Wilson. The red light flashes in front of them. Wilson turns to him and raises his voice over the noise of the twin Harley Davidson engines.

"Do you think we woke her up last night?"

House smirks through his bright black helmet.

They salute the green light and fade into the sun of one more good day.

* * *

AN – Soooo. It's over, people. And I wrote Cuddy into it without changing the whole point of the finale. Which I strongly suggest everyone to catch up with, even if you haven't watched any of season 8. Just watch it from 8x19 to 8x22, it's kind of worth a Cuddyless season. :)

Thanks for reading! And I'm sure you thought I was dead :D I'm still here... Just kind of entangled in my mess of a life.


End file.
